This has nothing to do with education or money. It has to do with a movie having a terrible and predictable story with one dimensional characters and an overly long running time.

Yeah, and despite having a somewhat predictable story and relatively normal movie characters it still managed to be totally ****ing awesome. The characters were basic archetypes and the plot was a series of popular tropes. Just like every other movie ever made. But for some reason people expected Avatar to transcend that because it cost so much to make. Sure, other movies might have more dynamic characters, but they serve the same purpose to the storyline. Would it have really helped if Jake and Quarrich had a backstory or became friends like DiCaprio and Nicholson in The Departed? I don't think so. It had a brisk pace. It didn't dwell on explaining the life story of every single character to you, which is something movies used to do a lot. Movies used to be all about showing you what was going on in a guy or gal's day today (or for 6 months). We don't really need to know what his deepest motivations are or anything like that.

A lot of people seem to forget that storytelling started out as someone sitting around saying "so one day this guy did this and this and this and etc..." It's just telling a story of something that (never) happened. I don't understand why people think every movie needs to be astonishing and life changing. It's just a story. Just because they didn't sit around and talk the whole time doesn't mean there isn't any story. You should know better than that. The first rule of film making is show, don't tell. We get to see these characters going through an extraordinary journey toward self actualization and it's amazing. We just get to sit and watch the stuff happen. Avatar doesn't tell us a story at all, like most movies do. It just shows it to you, like you happened to be there and you were remembering it happening.

It's really great film making, and you should be ashamed of yourself for failing to grasp it.

EDIT: And another thing that makes it so great is it's really just fundamental film making. It's a cool story about cool stuff happening in a cool place. Movies are about taking us somewhere special, and to me, this is something you clearly don't comprehend, SAJN.

THIS IS WHAT CAMERON WANTED!

Perfect.

I enjoyed the movie. The people behind me however, apparently could not, had their girlfriends with them and would not shut up and kept talking about how they wanted to leave. Up to the point where one made a very off-color remark that irked me (I can't remember what that was). Then I cracked my knuckles, turned my head and glared at them, at which point they shut up and very sheepishly walked out of the theater.

I still can't help, but wonder if I'll still like the movie if I watch it on Blu-Ray at home. Granted there will be 3D glasses supplied, but it's usually the standard kind that's blue and red. For the record, I still like The Dark Knight and Terminator 2 more than Avatar.

Watched in the cinema yesterday
Used two projectors with polarized light
It was frickin' awesome...

Just saw it yesterday, absolutely brilliant movie.
I went in there expecting a cliche storyline, and guess what? I got it.
Yes, the overall storyline is as old as the hills, but if all you got from the movie was that it had a cliche storyline then you have missed out on something terrific.
It's a rare movie that gets me emotionally involved in the characters, this one got me.

I thought i had already posted in this... anyway

The design of the Na'vi is ****. Epic ****. Seriously, you could give a toddler some LSD and he would come up with something better.

6*... A Blue Human with extra toes, yellow eyes, and a lion-ish nose
DOES NOT MAKE AN ALIEN. IT MAKES [ Go to Line 6*...]

And no, the ecosystem wasnt amazingly well thought out. It was a bigger, brighter, more artistic version of Earth Rainforests.

These gifs shall explain my feelings further:

:rant::argh::rant::argh::carl::gonk::eng101:

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

Lawl my kid could do a Jackson Pollack painting.

give a human a wrinkly head and more hair, he's klingon
give a human frickin' pointy ears, and he's either a vulcan or an elf
take a human's height and divide it by 2 and you got a frickin' dwarf

compared to that a blue human with extra toes, yellow eyes and a lion-ish nose is pretty awesome...

My guess is that they had to go humanoid, otherwise the mocap wouldn't work very well...

don't use logic to explain why the aliens were humanoid.

Give a human nothing but glowy eyes and a deep voice and he's a Goa'uld.

Stick *that* in your pipe and smoke it, Ruthy

BURN!

HELP
I READ RUTHVEN'S POST AND NOW I AM STUCK IN AN INFINITE LOOP
OH GOD THERE ISN'T MUCH TIME SOMEONE HELP M

Stack overflow

[nerd]But see, there's where you're wrong. The human with the glowy eyes is just the host. The Goa'uld is the finned, snaky critter that burrowed into the back of the human's neck and subjugated his/her central nervous system. [/i won't bother to close the nerd markup]

I didn't like it, for reasons already stated.

But then again, i was hammered and fell asleep on the stranger next to me.

Anthony, I think you take your offense to SAJN's remarks a little too serious. I kind of understand where SAJN is coming from. He's seeing a movie that he believes is mediocre. He's basically rebelling against the pop culture that is out there trumpeting the film as amazing. I kind of have gone through this with a couple of films. First, in general, I tend to rebel against whatever is pop culture. Everybody seems to love Johnny Depp but I find him annoying. The two films I refer to are Fight Club and The Hurt Locker. I just plain find Fight Club to be overrated. I don't hate on it much but maybe it's just too high brow for me. The Hurt Locker I just generally found to be a terrible film. If it had only been billed as a psychological B film I wouldn't have had a problem with it but everybody wanted to like it and over hyped it. I might be more forgiving if I ever manage to catch it on TV and can sit through the whole thing but my opinion is that it is pure garbage. Sad, because I like Point Break. Anyway, my point is that SAJN doesn't like the film and is rebelling against the "OMFG it's awesome!"

Having said that, I don't get the real problems anyone might have with the film. I mean, Star Wars was pretty formulaic before it spawned five se/pre-quels (and, yes, it was "Star Wars" before it was "Episode 4"). Star Wars retold a classic formula with impressive visuals and fantasy. Now, I must admit, I am kind of a sucker for the Dances With Wolves type story Avatar told. For some reason I always identify with the white guy befriends natives type story therein.

SAJN has some points. Yes, Michelle Rodriguez is ALWAYS annoying. Even in real life. Kind of irritating. I'm sure there are much prettier and more talented Mexican gang bangers that deserve a shot (okay, I don't think she's actually a gang banger). Sure the bad guys are pretty stereotypical and I already commented on my disappointment with some lines relating to current events. I did think it was funny that the film he hates is basically his signature.



You must tell us how that ended.



I'm just curious, are you a large, intimidating, person?

So this was the first film I dared take my boy to in quite awhile. He was much better than before but still gave me some trouble. He's almost 4 and 2 2/3 hours plus previews and stuff is a long time for him to sit still. So I had to take him out a few times. I sat in the first upper row where only a rail I could step over lie in front of me. The third time out I let him walk down the row while I stepped over and held his had. The dude in the end seat didn't want to move his legs for my child to pass even after I said excuse me. I'm an overly polite person, to a fault, so I just lifted him over while he started to begrudgingly move his legs. Now, generations of hair styles have come and gone since I last got in a fight but I was totally ready to visit the judge if I had to on this one. Fortunately, he fled the theater as soon as the credits started to roll. I was basically just loudly going to point him out to my wife and hope he "manned up".

They're not really supposed to be actually alien. And alien being would be impossible to relate to. They are designed to make it as easy as possible for the actors and animators to relate to the audience, while dodging the uncanny valley.

You could criticize the plot continuity, practicality and realism of the movie till the cows come home. You just have to accept the movie is an expensive excuse to look at pretty bio-luminescent forests.

<3

I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, which is a fairly uncommon occurrence. (As a film I think it hangs together far better than The Dark Knight, which is the last movie that hype forced down my throat.) Not sure I enjoyed seeing it in 3D, and I'm kind of sick of the whole Dances with Wolves storyline (white guy "goes native" but ends up being The Man--i.e. racially privileged--anyways). Also I'm not sure if the Native American and African tropes were embarrassingly unimaginative or just ineptly political.

Nonetheless, I liked it a lot.

I don't recall anyone bringing up continuity issues. And no, it isn't an excuse to look at pretty effects. It's a great movie that happens to have great effects.

I'm seeing the movie on Wednesday, but yeah, this.

I'll explain this the same way I did in the chat... although this might not be the best way to explain this to the members of this forum....

If a super super hot chick comes up to you and says "hey I'd like to give you a blowjob" would you say "nope... I've had one... don't need to experience that again" or are you gonna say "even though I've had one, I think I'll try this one out to see how good it is"?

The Dances with Wolves storyline is not nearly as good as a blowjob.

This is accurate.

I don't know, it's a pretty close call.



I know what you're thinking, either this guy's had some awful blowjobs or the movie is just that freaking awesome. I'm trying to convey the later.

I haven't read through the whole thread, 'cause I haven't seen the movie, but why do people keep mentioning The Dark Knight?

Cuz someone brought it up as the last epic movie they saw before Avatar. Dark Knight is going down in nerd history as awesome, Avatar looks like it will too

I am SO using that

that is the most awesome explanation I've ever seen, I'm going to use it again, and again, and again, and again in every movie/science thread I'm going to see

funnily enough i'm looking into this stuff for my early dissertation for Games Art course. Just like District 9, the aliens have human-like eyes and expressions.
Without this, humans cannot empathise with alien characters. General term for this is humanising. [?]

Also going to look at how cultures and gender influence the design of non human creatures in various games.

For the most part, you look at the Na'vi and you recognise cultures from here on earth. "Go with what u know", so to speak.

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

Sodomy. But I don't know if it was a girl or even if I was in charge!

Possibly, but are we talking about blowjobs anthony is likely to receive? Dances with Wolves is three hours long and the extended version about four. Imagine a three to four hour blowjob. That would really ... suck.

Also: what if the last blowjob you got was from someone who didn't know what they were doing? Chances are the really hot chick that's seeking out people to blow has some idea of how to do it right

I've gotten some pretty amazing hummers in my day.

We're not talking about hummers though =p

I have the feeling that this is one of those cases of someone giving a movie a poor review because it increases their artsy and indie cred, for being able to tell dreck from drool.

Personally, my problem wasn't that the plot had done before, it's that they didn't bother to make it their own. At this point, almost any imaginable plot has been done before, but good writing can turn a formulaic plot into a story still worth watching with characters you care about. The writing didn't do that for me.

Antony - in your analogy, I guess the writing would equate to the hotness of the girl offering the blowjob. Or her technique? I don't know.

So yes, Star Wars was an old story, but Lucas made it his own, wrote the characters in such a way that I actually cared about them, etc... That doesn't make it bad per se, but it doesn't make it good either.

I'm not really seeing how Avatar didn't accomplish that. I saw it again today and was just speechless in awe of it's awesomeness as a film.

It's okay if you don't like the movie, I still See You, and consider you One of The People.

I thought this was the most interesting aspect of the movie. I also thought it was interesting how this emphasized the emotional dimension of the romance while the sexuality of the female lead was (IMHO) de-emphasized in such a way that it did not seem to come into play.